There are two big topics this week. The first is that on Wednesday, June 1, the children's librarians from the Manhattan Beach branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library (Michael Mackavoy and Regina Ochoa) will be on campus presenting assemblies and meeting with interested families and students. Students in TK, K, 1, 2, and 3 will see an assembly during the day; any student accompanied by his or her adult guardian is invited to drop by our school library between 1:30 and 2:00 to visit with one of the librarians--this is a good option for students in grades 4 and 5. The public library's summer reading program has its kickoff event on Wednesday, June 22. A flyer with details about this event as well as other summer reading performances is below--just click on it to view it or print it.

The other big news is that the school year is almost over! The very last day to check out books from the Pennekamp library this year is Friday, June 3. All books are due no later than Friday, June 10. Next week will be the last week of class visits to the library. Parents, please help your students find and return everything from our library--and please return materials borrowed in your own name. District policy requires that I put a hold on the report card of any student who has materials still checked out on the last day of school; the same goes for materials checked out by a parent--I have to hold the library card of that parent's son or daughter. If a book has been lost or damaged beyond repair, please make payment for it in exact change or a check payable to MBUSD. The sooner we can clear this all up, the better! Thanks very much for supporting the library by returning your materials promptly.

Speaking of thanks, I am very grateful for my year-end gift of scrip! I am very touched by your appreciation and generosity. Thank you so much!

Next week, June 9, is the last meeting of the 5th-grade book club. We will be discussing The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown.

The summer pleasure reading lists prepared by the district's library media specialists can be viewed from the district website. (Reading list books are shown at the right.) This week I will be reading a book or two from the list for each grade. Please note that these lists are not required reading, they are only suggestions for parents and students looking for reading material during the summer. Students entering 6th grade at MBMS do have required reading, and the list for those students can also be seen on the district website.

Next Wednesday, June 1, students in TK, kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade will attend an assembly presented by the children's librarians from the Manhattan Beach public library. The Los Angeles County Public Library always offers a summer reading program, and that's the subject of the assemblies. From 1:30 to 2:00 p.m. on June 1 the public librarians will be available to chat with PK families in our school library. Please come by and get to know these friendly, knowledgeable librarians!

Sports is the theme for every grade's readaloud this week. Our library has a tremendous number of books about sports, and these are on display this week. The number of sports books has just increased as we received an order of many new titles, which is part of why I am focusing on this theme right now. Our beautiful new books are purchased through generous funding provided by the Pennekamp PTA. Please come help yourself to these new books!​Many people enjoy watching and playing sports. Exercise is important for everyone's health, teamwork carries over into cooperative work and relationships, and the discipline and perseverance necessary to athletic success are character traits that can promote success in other areas of life. One other thing about sports that interests me is the influence famous athletes can have on the culture.

This week I am giving a lot of attention to a picture book focused on a very inspiring person: Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, a disabled cyclist who rode across Ghana to challenge people's stereotypes and assumptions about disability. He was and is an inspiration to countless individuals; further, he has successfully advocated for legal protection for the disabled against discrimination in his home country.

In the year 2005 a movie was made about Emmanuel Yeboah called Emmanuel's Gift. It can be rented on Amazon, and I would recommend it to families with children old enough to sit through its run time of 80 minutes. Below you can see the trailer, and on YouTube there is also an "update" posted in 2011. (As always, children should be closely supervised when viewing content on YouTube as the comments and sidebars are often inappropriate for children.)

Poem-in-Your-Pocket week seemed to be fun for the students! We had a lot of participation this year, and the students' pictures are up on a new poster in the library.

In a couple of weeks, on June 1, we are having assemblies with the children's librarians from the Manhattan Beach public library. The topic is the public library's summer reading programs, and grades TK, K, 1, 2, and 3 will be going to the assemblies. Then, after school, the librarians will be available in the Pennekamp library if you or your students would like to come by and meet them, ask any questions, get book recommendations, learn about e-books at the public library--anything you'd like to know!

The district's summer reading lists are now online for grades 1 & 2, grade 3, and grades 4 & 5. All the elementary library media specialists (including myself) create the lists as suggestions of books that your students might enjoy over the summer. They are OPTIONAL and not part of the curriculum. Anything your son or daughter wants to read over the summer is fine with me :-)

This is Poem-in-Your-Pocket Week at Pennekamp! Our weeklong event is inspired by national Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day. This week, students are invited to carry a poem in their pocket--to share with a friend, read to the class, or simply for the fun of reaching in a pocket and finding a poem in there! Students can bring their poem to the library and be photographed for our annual "Pocket Poem" poster. Many poetry books are on display again this week in the library. If a student would like to write an original poem for his or her pocket, that would be great! Students can also hand-copy or photocopy one from a book. There are many poetry sites online, but most have poems for adults, with adult content, so parents--please watch out for that.

Almost all classes are hearing books with poems in them or that are written in rhyme. Grade 5 is hearing a book about the changing lyrics of the song we know as "My Country 'Tis of Thee." They will sing various versions of the song at their upcoming culmination ceremony.

The grade 5 book club met last week and has chosen the next and final book for the club this year: The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown. The next meeting will be on June 9, 2016.

This week most grades are enjoying poetry. Specific book selections can be found on the Weekly Readalouds page.

Grade 4 will have a chance this week to create "blackout poems," a form created by poet Austin Kleon (video interview below). We will work with pages from discarded books. To create a blackout poem, the poet selects words from a page of text and "blacks out" the rest of the page with a black marker. It's not as easy as it sounds: choosing words that work together takes real thought, but it can yield some wonderful poems.

Next week will be Pennekamp's "Poem-in-Your-Pocket Week." Our weeklong event is inspired by national Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day. Next week, students are invited to carry a poem in their pocket--to share with a friend, read to the class, or simply for the fun of reaching in a pocket and finding a poem in there! Students can bring their poem to the library and be photographed for our annual "Pocket Poem" poster. Many poetry books are on display this week in the library. If a student would like to write an original poem for his or her pocket, that would be great! Students can also hand-copy or photocopy one from a book. There are many poetry sites online, but most have poems for adults, with adult content, so parents--please watch out for that.

Winners have been announced for the contests in which we've been participating this year: The winner of the California Young Reader Medal in the Primary category is The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Dawalt; and in the Picture Books for Older Readers category, the winner is Helen's Big World: The Life of Helen Keller, by Doreen Rapaport. The winner of the Cook Prize is Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled All of France, by Mara Rockliff.

The district summer pleasure reading lists have been posted on the MBUSD website. Look under the tab for Students or the tab for Parents--you should see Summer Reading Lists. The lists for grades 1 and 2, grade 3, and for grades 4 and 5 are OPTIONAL. Students entering grade 6 and up in our district do have reading requirements, which are spelled out on the lists for those grades. It looks like the list for entering 6th-graders is still being revised--please check back for that one after May 27.

Barbara Siegemund-Broka, library media specialist, maintains this blog to inform Pennekamp students and families about library news and related content. Any opinions expressed here are solely her own.

What's Ms. Barbara reading?

Song for a Whale,​ by Lynne Kelly​

﻿Worth repeating:﻿

​"In my 'Mending Wall' was my intention fulfilled with the characters portrayed and the atmosphere of the place? […] I should be sorry if a single one of my poems stopped with either of those things—stopped anywhere in fact. My poems—I should suppose everybody's poems—are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless. Ever since infancy I have had the habit of leaving my blocks, carts, chairs, and such like ordinaries where people would be pretty sure to fall forward over them in the dark. Forward, you understand, and in the dark. I may leave my toys in the wrong place and so in vain. It is my intention we are speaking of—my innate mischievousness."

Quoted in Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance, by George Monteiro